Dead Certain - Mariah Stewart [125]
As their champion, Mara spent many hours reviewing the files provided by the social workers from the county Children and Youth Services department and medical reports from their physicians, and still more hours interviewing the social workers themselves, along with neighbors and teachers, emergency room personnel, family members, and family friends. All in an effort to determine what was best for the children, where their needs—all their needs—might best be met, and by whom.
Mara approached every case as a sacred trust, an opportunity to stand for that child as she would stand for her own. Tomorrow she would do exactly that, when she presented her report and her testimony to the judge who would determine whether Kelly Feehan’s parental rights should be terminated and custody of her three children awarded to their deceased father’s parents. It probably wouldn’t be too tough a call.
Kelly, an admitted prostitute and heroin addict, had watched her world begin to close in on her after her fifth arrest for solicitation. Her nine-year-old had stayed home from school to take care of his siblings until Kelly could make bail. Unfortunately for Kelly, her former in-laws, who had been searching for the children for months while their mother had moved them from one low-rent dive to another, had finally tracked them down. The Feehans had called the police. Their next move had been to take temporary custody of the children, who were found bruised, battered, and badly malnourished.
Over time, it became apparent that Kelly wasn’t doing much to rehabilitate herself. She’d shown up high on two of her last three visitation days, and the grandparents had promptly filed a petition to terminate Kelly’s parental rights permanently. Total termination of parental rights was a drastic step, one never made lightly nor without a certain amount of angst and soul searching.
Mara knew all too well the torment of losing a child.
In the end, of course, the decision would rest in the hands of Judge McKettrick, whom Mara knew from experience was always reluctant to sever a parent’s rights when the parent contested as vehemently as Kelly Feehan had. Much would depend on the information brought to the court in the morning. The responsibility to present everything fairly, without judgment or embellishment, was one that Mara took very seriously.
With the flick of her finger, the screen of Mara’s laptop went blank, then filled with the image of a newborn snuggled up against a shoulder covered by a yellow and white hospital gown. The infant’s hair was little more than pale fuzz, the eyes closed in slumber, the perfect rosebud mouth puckered just so.
Another flick of a finger, and the image was gone.
Mara’s throat constricted with the pain of remembrance, the memories of the joy that had filled her every time she’d held that tiny body against her own. Abruptly she pushed back from the table and walked to the door.
“Spike,” she called, and from the living room came the unmistakable sound of a little dog tail thumping on hard wood. “It’s time to go for a walk.”
Spike knew walk, but not time, which was just as well, since it was past one in the morning. But once the thorn of memory began to throb, Mara had to work it out of her system. Her conditioned response to emotional pain was physical. Any kind of sustained movement would do—a walk, a run, a bike ride, a trip to the gym. Anything that got her on her feet was acceptable, as long as it got her moving through the pain so that she could get past it for a while.
Mara pursued exhaustion where others might have chosen a bottle or a needle or a handful of pills, though there’d been times in the past when she’d considered those, too.
By day, Mara’s neighborhood in a suburban Philadelphia college town was normally quiet, but at night, it was as silent as a tomb.